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As part of my practice routine I'm making MIDI recordings of my efforts using Garageband. This works fine.

I was wondering if there is any way to record treble and bass onto separate tracks?

Thanks a heap!

PS I realize that I could record right and left hands separately, but there must be a way to do this with software ...

I'm not too familiar with Garage Band, but what are you trying to achieve in the end?

I ask because there may not be a way to do what you want, or it's possible but pretty tricky. So knowing what your end game is perhaps some alternative solutions can be offered.

Off the top of my head without knowing what your goal is, I'd say either make your hands together playing be at the levels you want, or record them separately on separate tracks. Those will be the simplest ways of getting two tracks.

Thanks for your reply, Morodiene. Mostly I am just curious if it can be done in software. I’m using an ES100 which is a really nice entry level keyboard, but it has limited controller capability. It won’t let you split and assign different channels to each section. At least I haven’t found a way to do that yet. You can split and use two different internal sounds.

As to why, I’m thinking it might be useful to be able to listen to the right and left hands separately, by muting the appropriate track. Also I would like to experiment with assigning different effects to the right and left hands — reverb in the treble with a clean bass??

I would also like to try pedal in the bass and no pedal in the treble, just to see what it sounds like. I doubt Garageband will let me add pedal, but maybe ...

From what I understand, GarageBand records MIDI in OMNI mode. It will record all MIDI events into a single track, even if your MIDI keyboard has multiple MIDI channels.

If you want left and right hands on different tracks, you may have to record them separately.

One method would be to transmit the lower notes of the keyboard on one MIDI channel and the upper notes on another (there are 16 channels so you could use one and two for example). Then you'd need to select those tracks on two recording tracks in your DAW. Although siros thinks this isn't possible with Garage Band, it should be an option in most recording software. Certainly, you can select midi channels in Reaper, which you can download and use free.

But to do this, you need to be able to split the keyboard and transmit notes below the split on a different channel from those above. This may or may not be possible on your DP - you'd have to search the manual.

However, even this wouldn't work 100% because your left hand part might go above the split point and vice versa.

I think the easiest and most reliable way to do it is to record the two tracks separately.

I have tried a little GarageBand and this seems to confirms the siros'sanswer. The multitrack-record function is made to record multiple audio tracks at once with eventually 1 instrument track (and no more).

Many thanks to siros, toddy and Frederic L. for the useful information!

As suggested, I think my best bet is to record two separate tracks.